Parker Lowell
I would've said more, but I wasn't quite sure where to go from there. Should I throw myself onto him in the biggest hug I had ever given anyone and cry and sob about how I was so happy I had finally found him or should I formally shake hands with him or should I just stand there and wait for him to do something?
I opted to just stand there though I know that I was perfectly capable of the other two options. But with knowing that I was capable of them came that sense of how he probably wasn't. Talking to him about how I had been searching for him for so long would do no good because it would only hurt when he at the very least implied that he hadn't been searching for me. I guess I had always just magically assumed that my brother was looking for me the same way I was looking for him. It had never occurred to me that he might not even have the slightest idea that I existed.
It had also never occurred to me that he might have siblings. That he might already have brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters that were already very important to him. Brothers and sisters who he might lose because of me and everything that I brought about.
I didn't expect him to reply, so I was quite shocked when I heard an extremely faint, "Hi," coming from the other side of the room. He cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. It was obvious that, like me, he wasn't quite sure how to react.
"So....," I began, but ended up just trailing off. What could I say from there?
Actually, a thousand or so places I could have gone from there ran through my mind. So, how've you been? So, where've you been? So, you're a teenage pop star...
"This is really awkward," he commented. I had to strain to hear him.
"Yeah," I agreed, not quite sure I was supposed to hear it. "Although, not quite as awkward as yesterday when I walked out of the bathroom and your little brother grabbed me by the arm and told me to be very quiet because he was hunting rabbits."
Taylor smirked. It was the first time I saw one of those on him. I couldn't help but smile myself, feeling a sense of triumph in getting him to smile.
"Nice view," he said, pointing out the window I was standing in front of which, through its glass, showed a scene of the city of Buffalo on a gray, rainy day.
"Oh, yeah," I said sarcastically. "Better than getting to stare at the pool boy cleaning the pool every time you look out the window. Although not as good as watching the silhouette of the mean fat lady next door geting dressed and undressed in her bedroom."
He scrunched up his nose and, for a moment, I thought I heard him quietly laughing.
"Is that true?"
I looked at him frankly. It only made him scruch up his nose more when he realized that it was.
"Ick."
"Ick is not quite the word for it. Everyone thinks that I'm this huge recluse because of the way I keep my shades drawn all the time. I'm too embarrassed to tell them the real reason."
"We've got nothing but yard out our window. The neighbors are a little too far away for us to see in their windows. Although Isaac sometimes wishes that he could."
"My friend Julian's house is surrounded on three sides by a cornfield," I told him. "And on the fourth side, there's a road and then another cornfield."
"Oh great," he said.
"I envy him. He gets more bugs in the summer, but it's better than the fat lady next door. Sometimes I feel like I'm on Friends."
"You watch Friends?"
He asked it as if he didn't know they had television on Mars.
"Yeah," I said. "Among other things. Perhaps among too many other things."
"Mmm," he said, continuing to stare out the window as if Buffalo were one of the most fascinating things he had ever seen. "Do you live here?"
"Uh, no," I said. "I actually live in a really small town closer to Rochester. That's why it took Gina so long to get here last night, We live pretty far away. From anywhere, that is."
"Gina's your...um, mother right?"
"Yup," I said. "Which reminds me, I have to see if I have all your siblings straight because for most of the night last night, I was completely lost as to what to call any of them. There's Isaac and Zac, I know that. And then..."
"Jessica, Avery, Mackenzie, and Zoe's the baby," he told me.
"I'll have to write that down some time," I said. "I don't think I'll be able to remember it."
He laughed. "Sometimes I have trouble remembering it myself," he said. "Do you have any siblings?" There was an awkwardness to the question.
"No," I answered. "Some of Gina's boyfriend were real creeps and are of the type that shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. Ever. Although, some of them did have kids. Her boyfriend before the one she has now had a really cool daughter that was my age. We got to be pretty good friends. But then he broke up with Gina and I haven't seen her since."
"Oh," he said. "Sorry."
"Yeah, so am I. She was really cool and he was tolerable. I wouldn't have minded that much if they had gotten married. A lot of people thought they were going to. But I guess something happened."
He sighed and I knew the subject was about to turn serious.
"I wonder if I've been disowned yet?" He eyed the door nervously as if trying to see through to the door across the hall where his brothers and sisters were being told they weren't actually his brothers and sisters.
"I think the contract you signed with your record company says they can't," I said. He smiled faintly at my joke.
He didn't have long to stand there and mull over it because before we knew it, we heard the door to the other room open and soft footsteps followed.
Gina walked into the room, her head down and looking quite depressed. Not the most encouraging sign she could have given Taylor, had she known he was even in the room.
He took a deep breath. "I suppose I should go."
"Good luck," I said. "Even though I honestly don't think you need it."
He smiled at me for that.
Gina smiled at him encouragingly as he walked out of the room. He smiled back like a soldier headed to war knowing that he probably wasn't ever going to come back home.
When the door was closed behind him, Gina looked at me, the look of absolute seriousness still on her face. She opened her mouth and I expected her to tell me that they had decided to disown him after all, but nothing came out. Instead, she did something unexpected. She walked over to me and took me in her arms. We stood there, just hugging, for a very long time.
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Index
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Twenty